"Hah, you should have seen the look on her face, Jin," says Eiji. "She spent like twenty minutes just looking around for you, getting more and more desperate. She nearly tripped over her own heels. Man, she looked so gaudy with that big crinoline bow tied on her chest. I swear, you must have made her think she was going to be treated like a princess."

Ayana had never realised just how hard school would be. Certainly she was intelligent enough to understand the topics she was being taught, but she had neither the self discipline nor the six years of practice her classmates had to really understand studying. Worse, she was socially awkward, made her classmates uncomfortable with her topics of interest, and was generally considered "the weird girl" by most of her classmates.

"Worked like a charm," Jin replies to Eiji with a grin. "That girl's so weird. I can't believe she actually thought I'd dance with her." He laughs, cruelly, then winks to Misato as she rounds the corner.

"Pig," the girl replies with a roll of her eyes. Misato pauses a moment later, then slowly slides her way towards Jin and Eiji. "So I guess you didn't hear, then," she tells Jin, amusement and wickedness in her tone.

She wanted so desperately to go to the dance. Most of her classmates were already paired off to go, but Ayana hadn't been asked. As they days passed, Ayana grew increasingly worried that she wouldn't be able to go. She certainly couldn't ask Takashi; he was too busy, and even if he did go, it wouldn't be with her. But dances were supposed to be romantic and fun; in all of the manga she'd read, even the awkward girl was supposed to get a prince at a dance.

"Eiji was telling you about the weird girl at the dance, right?" Misato asks, drawing out her rumour for its worth.

Eiji nods his head. "Yeah," he says, "I was just getting to the part where she hid under the table."

"Wait, she did?!" Jin asks, then barks out laughing all the harder. "Ahahaha, Misato, that's great! She seriously hid under the table!? What a weirdo."

"Oh, sure, for a few minutes," Misato replied. "But she didn't stay there the whole night. Just long enough for Mamoru Chiba to find her."

Ayana sat under the table, staring out through the tablecloth, wiping tears in her eyes. "Stupid Jin," she said quietly to herself. "Stupid jerk." Anger and embarrassment warred within the girl. She sighed as yet another of her favourite songs started to play. "No one's ever going to dance with me," she murmured to herself. "I wish I'd never come." Pulling out her cell phone, she tuned the party out. While her classmates were busy having a laugh at her expense, Ayana played otome games and wished for her prince to save her.

"Wait, what?" Jin gives Misato a funny look, then asks, "Isn't that the boy from Infinity? He's super popular, what would he want with our weird girl?"

"To dance with her, apparently," Misato replies, her smile growing as she spots the look of horror on Jin's face. "In fact," she says, "they danced for several songs, and he looked like he was having a ton of fun with her. And she looked like she was having fun, too."